The Crapbox...Comic books found in the quarter bin or half-off store or the bargain box. The good, the bad and the really ugly. Get ready for a surprise. Updates EVERY Friday and Monday until the Crapbox runs dry. (never happen)

Friday, August 11, 2017

Tandy Computer Whiz Kids and the Computer that said No to Drugs!

but
it said YES to a crippling addiction to alcohol

"The Computers that
said ‘No’ to Drugs!”

Writer – Paul Kupperberg

Penciller – Dick Ayers

Inker – Chic Stone

Editor – William Plamer

March 1985

Fort
Worth is my hometown. I was born at Carswell Air Force Base hospital and after
brief jaunts around the globe with my family, moved back to Fort Worth. I spent
my formative years beneath the shadow of Cowtown.

One
of Fort Worth’s biggest investors was Tandy Corporation. Originally a leather
supply store called Tandy Leather, the brand expanded into the electronic craft
retail market in 1963 with their Radio Shack stores. That was before SoC times,
so I don’t know how that transition went.

I
do know that the downtown Fort Worth skyline I grew up with wouldn’t be the
same without the Tandy Center towers, two double digit buildings that flanked a
large two-level shopping complex in the middle of downtown. It featured one of
the few year-round ice skating rinks in Fort Worth and a few of my high school
friends would end up employed by mall stores before we graduated. I have a
bunch of fond memories of that place.

What
I have less fond memories of are Tandy’s TRS-80’s computer systems. Dubbed
“Trash-80’s” by those of us who had to use them, these monstrously heavy
computers would be my first exposure to actual programming. They had all the
graphics capabilities of a poor-man’s calculator and were about as much fun to
operate.

That
didn’t stop me from being attracted to the notion of working on one. My high
school got four of them for their “computer department” and I was determined to
figure them out. Having lived through the Atari – Intellivision – Colecovision
wars with my fellow teenage friends, an actual computer would beat all of
those, hands down. Or so I thought.

I
decided I would sign up for Learning Computer Basic at school, however I wanted
to do it the right way. So, I took a half-semester typing course first. When
that was done, I signed up for the computer course only to have it be taught by
the typing teacher – who didn’t know a thing about computers so she made us
spend the first two-thirds of the semester typing before we ever got to touch
the TRS-80’s at the back of the class.

I
have to say that while I’m still a pretty shitty typist, I started out about
95% better than every real-world IT person I’ve ever met. I’ve encounter so many
IT guys from that era who could only hunt and peck that it’s sort of funny.

I
mention those computers, because that’s what this issue is about: selling
computers to kids. This was a freebie comic given away at Radio Shack to create
brand awareness and spur sales of Tandy’s new COLOR Computer 2. How does it
fair as a story though? Oh, it’s a doozey!

We’ve
got Paul Kupperberg writing a story, possibly in about ten minutes on his lunch
break between doing DC Comics Presents issues, Dick Ayers and Chic Stone on
art, working as hard as they can to make computers look like superheroes, and
colors/letters handled by unknown hands.

We
begin with drug smugglers who have just picked up a huge haul of drugs in their
drug smuggling boat. If Tandy had been really smart the smuggling operation
would have involved one of Tandy’s RC toy boats to cross promote their
children’s toy line. Anyway: three bad guys…

Who
are led by this fellow in the hat who looks a bit like Lex Luthor. They plan on
making a million bucks, which in 1980’s dollars was a huge sum of money, unlike
today where it is what most people end up paying for a four bedroom, two-story
house.

Note
the “drugs” are never identified. We don’t know what kind of drugs they are smuggling.
Not to mention their plan to deliver them to their buyer is straight up
stupid. But let’s proceed.

And
proceed we shall, right to Alec and Shanna’s middle school where their teacher
Ms. Wilson has three surprises for them. There were several different “Whiz
Kids” comics printed and this issue counts as at least their second appearance.
As for Ms. Wilson’s surprises, if you guess the first is a Tandy computer
product, give yourself a gold star.

Okay,
so this book is a hybrid. Some kind of weird cross between a set of computer catalogue ads from Radio
Shack AND a comic book with a story about drug smugglers foiled by smart kids. Here we have the ad portion as we get
exposition dumped-on explaining all about the new Tandy Color Computer 2 and
peripherals.

I
LOVE some of this so much because it is nostalgia of the best kind. Such shitty
technology we had back then. “Daisy Wheel Printers” for those of you too young
to remember, were printers that worked like old fashioned typewriters. They had
ONE font, with the letters in upper and lower case on a circular shaped “wheel”
that would spin and type the letters onto tractor fed paper. These were all
replaced by dot matrix printers that were way more versatile in a very short
span of time, so hearing them being discussed like they were the greatest thing
is hilarious.

And
I’d bet dollars to donuts that using that Scripsit word processing program would be like
going back into the stone age. Bye-bye spelling and grammar check, ta-ta
graphics, tables, fonts, highlighting, cut and paste…and so much more. Truly
prehistoric is the only apt comparison.

And
then we get to the modem! The DELUXE RS-232 program pack with DC-1 modem
probably ran at speeds of less than 1200-2400 baud.

I
point this out because it is integral to the plot in just a bit. Oh, yes! There
is a story here remember. Not just a catalogue of computer parts and pieces.
Drug smugglers! Nosey reporters! Precocious kids!

Speaking
of those drug smugglers, what are they up to?

Ah,
doing their civic duty by helping at the local Science and Technology Exhibition.
How extraordinarily kind of them.

But
wait! It’s all a cover up for their real purpose: smuggling drugs. The drugs
they plan on hiding….duh-duh-dunn! …in a computer printer box!

But
back in the classroom, Ms. Wilson moves on to surprise number two, which ISN’T
more products that can be bought at your neighborhood Radio Shack. Oh, no. It’s
a visit from the Po-Po! One that some of these kids are already familiar with.

I’m
sure there is no underlying racist message in that second panel, by the way.

The
officer who shows up is Jack Shaw, who was in the prior Whiz Kids book. He
fills these tykes heads with all the latest news about drugs, their street
names, how easy it is to obtain them, which paper is the easiest to roll a
joint out of…you know, the usual drug talk.

And
I don’t know why, but my brain hears all this being read in Lesile Nielson’s
voice.

So,
after leading the kids in a chant against drugs, it is fitting that we have
another product placement bit for a Tandy pager.

Meanwhile,
the kids other friend from their last adventure, investigative reporter Judy
Baker spots two suspicious men. She id’s them as smugglers recently released
from prison and, using her special “Lois Lane” superpower, sneaks on to their
boat.

By
the way, asking politely if the drug dealers are in the cabin before barging in
is just good manners.

Here
is also where all kinds of logic makes its way right out the window. We start
this mess off by finding out the main Lex-looking bad guy is asleep in his
cabin.

Then
we have a brief interlude with the class again, where the third surprise is
that they will all get to take a trip to the Science and Technology Exhibit.
Ms. Wilson needs help picking up a printer box from some nice men, apparently -
*wink-wink*.

But
before they go, they’ve got a computer lesson to get though.

I
know very few will remember days like these, days when there were only a
limited number of computers in computer class and you had to fight tooth and
claw to get your 10 minutes of class time in front of one of those glowing,
low-resolution graphics CRTs, possibly absorbing lethal doses of radiation but
not caring. But I remember them. I remember the smell of the shattered bones
and blood as I emerged from the twisted piles of broken slide-rules and copies
of Dune before trudging off to my place behind a keyboard. I remember…and I
know the struggle was real.

Now,
back to our reporter. Who’s found the WRITTEN plan of the smugglers. Yeah, like
a signed confession, the plan sits in a drawer on the boat in a black file
folder. Here ya go! Take this to the police!

So
just take that off the boat and…wait! Lady! WTF are you doing? Don’t unpack your
exceedingly heavy laptop. Now is not the time to write your freaking news
story!

Judy,
how about GETTING OFF THE BOAT before someone returns to the boat! How about
that?

And
if you think this can’t get MORE idiotic, just you wait!

YES!
She is setting up an agonizingly slow method of communication across a dial up
link from a telephone THAT THE BOAT SHOULDN’T HAVE ANYWAY to “file her story”.
And she has to hurry because the smugglers could be back at any time.

Needless
to say, she has a chance to type out FIFTEEN WORDS…

…before
she is caught at gunpoint and tied up.

For
the kids who don’t know this, it probably took several minutes to setup that
laptop and wait for it to boot. Those dial up modems would produce an audible
whine that was unmistakable and impossible to sleep through for anyone in the
same house as you, and software such as what she was using to file her story
took time to open, login, and use as well.

What
I’m saying here is this was probably in the range of around 20-25 minutes’
worth of work. For fifteen words. She could have gotten off the boat, walked
down the pier, found a dive bar, called her newsroom, filed her story, asked
for them to send a photographer down to the docks, called the cops, ordered a nice
afternoon cocktail, drank it, walked back down the docks to meet her
photographer and been on hand to take pictures and interview the smugglers as
the police were carting them off in THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME IT TOOK TO SETUP
ALL THAT SLOW TECHNOLOGY!

Not
to mention that boats don’t have phones on them. Remember, this is before the
advent of affordable cell phone technology. That rotary dial phone may be
accurate, but there is no way it is on a boat sitting in the middle of the bay.
Nuh-uh.

Whatever
lunacy came over Kupperberg at this point, he now double-downs on it by having
the criminal not immediately leave port, shoot said noisy reporter, and dump
her weighted down body into the bay.

Instead
he uses his imaginary boat phone to call the cops and demand a ransom. Look a
Judy’s face in the bottom left panel. That look of shock and surprise you see
comes not from fear of being killed, but from realizing the amount of
information you can relay via telephone in such a short span of minutes. If
only she’d known sooner….

Meantime,
Alec and Shanna make a drug delivery for their teacher to the science fair. Oh,
wait! No, those are just boxes of computer parts.

When
who should they bump into but Detective Shaw. Shaw plays by his own rules,
including the rule that information from active investigations can be shared
with random pre-teens.

After
filling them in, Alec and Shanna decide to conduct their own investigation
using one of the Tandy computer’s at the science fair.

Note
how in the third panel even Alec is getting sick of having to refer to every
Tandy product by its complete name every time it’s brought up. Also Shanna must
be like the most bored kid on the planet. No one should read the newspaper thoroughly
enough to remember some random story about drug smugglers. Unless Shanna is the
buyer and is worried about her next shipment.

Just
to prove that adults can also use these same computers, the book gives
Detective Shaw a chance to do some actual detective work. He, of course, passes
all the work off to Bill who finds all the information for him.

Bill
finds the boat and solves the case! Leading to the police rushing *very
quietly* to the harbor.

And while the criminals plot their escape, the police
force’s crack scuba team surrounds the boat…wait! Wah? “crack scuba team?”
Seriously?

Time
to just give up and go with it. So the “frogmen” surround the boat, which would
stop a boat not all, but whatever. Shaw arrives and we have cops literally
crawling all over this watercraft.

And
the cops have some kind of imaginary *bzzzzt* gun that knocks out criminals
instead of blowing large holes in them. Our boat boarder does just that to two
of the criminals, but then Shaw decides to take things into his own hands.

Armed
with a megaphone and a revolver, he forces a standoff that would never happen
in a real hostage situation.

Disco
Lex Luthor decides not to play Shaw’s game, since it appears Shaw DOESN’T have
a *bzzzzt* gun and will probably perforate him with bullets instead of kindly
putting him in a coma. Nice dutch angle on that last scene.

Judy
is rescued, they pull the mask off the smuggler revealing him to be old man
Jenkins, Jenkins says his line about “I’d have gotten away with it too, if…”
and no one chews out Judy for her poor thinking.

The
Science Exhibit is quickly rechristened the “Use the phone in the bar up the
street” symposium honoring Alec and Shanna’s knowledge of computers and random
stories in the daily newspaper.

The
drugs are never shown, although we assume they were found but little did we
know it was just a huge box of Viagra to combat Lex’s case of erectile
dysfunction. Charges were later dropped and Lex was allowed to cruise the bars
in search of sweet honeys. Oh! And everyone celebrated the top geeks in their
class, Alec and Shanna. (and totally beat them up later for their lunch money.)

This
issue was a bit like stepping back into a time machine. And not a good time
machine, where you visit all the people and things you are fondly nostalgic
about…but more like a bad time machine, where you revisit your abusive
step-mother who would lock you in your room while serving your two prettier
step-sisters pie.

That
tech…looking back on it now it seems so alien and foreign. There were times I
pined for those Trash-80’s and now I wouldn’t take one if it were given to me.
Sad that no matter how much Tandy tried to innovate, the couldn’t keep up with
the changing pace of the very electronics revolution they helped usher in. IBM’s
P/S2 knocked them out of the computer market for good. Now they and the Radio
Shack brand are a thing of the past, much like those TRS-80’s.